TeamPitfalls®

The Method

After 10 years managing international teams in diverse fields such as medical, aerospace, robotics or fintech, Maxime Castéra developed the TeamPitfalls® method to challenge his teams and force them out of their comfort zone.

The LEGO® robot is used as a proxy for a product being developed and contributes to exposing team members to people, technical, planning or even political issues well known in a corporate project, but in a safe and feedback-friendly environment.

The key learning is no-one can succeed alone, the answer is in the Team.

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01

Challenge discovery

The facilitator introduces the challenge and its “only 5” requirements. The 3-4 teams get to know the challenge and if newly formed, their teammates for the day.
02

Design Build Fail Restart

The teams attempt to build a robot which would address the challenge and its requirements. Teams are free to organize as they see fit. This is the key moment of the workshop, this is when team pitfalls tend to pop out. This is where learning starts.

03

Demonstration

Teams gather to demonstrate how their robot solves the challenge and explain their choices, both technical and organizational. Winning team comes out.

04

Retrospective

This is the facilitated retrospective where the teams reflect together on what went well, and what did not, with a special focus on organizational issues. This is where learning truly takes place and call to actions are made for a better team cohesion, collaboration and identity in the workplace.
If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.
Jean Piaget

For who

Although our workshops appeal to techies, they are not aimed exclusively at them.
Both technical and non-technical teams benefit from our Team Pitfalls sessions, as they are facing challenges specific to their background.

Team Development

We help you build high-performance teams by developing your members outside of their comfort zone. We increase dependability within the team.
Throughout our workshops we help you press reset, and restart the right dynamic.

Recruitment

We organize recruitment events together with talent acquisition professionals, where candidates can be put in a real project situation and their team behaviour can be challenged and assessed.

Onboarding New Team Members

We help you onboard new team members in the project, by creating a quick bonding environment through a joint challenge.

Innovation

We put your team in an unfamiliar environment where thinking out of the box is not only encouraged but is necessity.

Digital Transformation

We help you prepare and on-board your team in your digital transformation by demystifying technology. We narrow the knowledge gap with new concepts such as robotics.

Remote Team Integration

Being remote can left team members feeling isolated, misunderstood and less engaged. Whether silence means Yes or No for your team members, our workshop will make communication needs very concrete, very fast.

Our Skills

We are trained in team development as well as conflict management.
The discussions within the teams will never go out of bounds and remain safe.
We encourage constructive conflicts as the key to a high-performing team identity, as long as it concerns the decision and action at hand and not the individuals.
  • TEAM DEVELOPMENT
  • CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
  • POWERFUL RETROSPECTIVES
Testimonials
 
Here at AB InBev we are always looking for innovative ways to develop our most important asset – our people.

The tasks allowed for our people to forge strong relationships, fail together and then re-build for greater success. Who knew something so simple could have such an impact. Many of our employees used the various feedback and learning sessions to share some truly valuable personal insights.

The tasks created an environment we thrive in here at ABI – one of competition challenge and growth. This is not to say some of our team struggled with the concept of learning from their failure. Having said that each team reflected positively on her they will now deal with failure, learn from it and use it to become stronger and more effective.

We would recommend TeamPitfalls® to an organisation or team who truly want to understand how they can learn from failure, a team who are comfortable being uncomfortable to become more effective and successful.

Natalie & Vesna

People Manager United Kingdom & Business Excellence Program Lead, AB InBev

Thanks to Max for the great TeamPitfalls® workshop!

A very efficient and fun hands-on method to discover common team behavior within a typical project setup.
It brought us applicable insights about how to improve teamwork between business and IT.

Jan

Head of IT, Volkswagen International Belgium

We organized a TeamPitfalls® workshop with the senior management team of the BESIX Engineering Department.

The workshop was a real eye opener for all involved who were unanimously enthusiast about the concept and the guidance by Maxime.

Combining creative thinking with ‘hands and minds’ in a spontaneous team set up really helped us to understand team dynamics much better.

We learned that fun, focus, simplification and continuous testing of ideas is a great way to achieve unexpected results.

I would recommend this training and Maxime to all teams who believe in passion and co-creation as the foundation of success!

Jan

Director Engineering, Besix

Nous avons effectué avec mon équipe un TeamPitfalls® workshop, le but étant entre autres de mettre en évidence les forces et les faiblesses de notre équipe.

En effet, les personnes ont pu voir les difficultés d’alignement entre infrastructure et développement, les problèmes de communication en interne, le problème de gestion de temps et bien d’autres.

Ce workshop a aussi permis une toute autre dynamique d’équipe très positive et de remise en question les jours qui ont suivis.

Aurélien

IT Tribe Lead UX, Ingenico Group

Maxime a emmené dans son exercice une dizaine de top Senior Executives de Belfius.

Sur base de quelques directives très simples et l’utilisation d’un matériel que nous avons tous utilisé plus jeunes, cet exercice révèle les talents individuels et de team sous un jour nouveau.

Ecoute, interprétation, teamwork, délégation, partage, jusqu’auboutisme, leadership, humilité, learning mindset, sont quelques uns des comportements que ce moment étonnant et plein de fraîcheur permet d’observer.

Merci Maxime pour l’excellence de ton accompagnement !

Eric

Head of Organisational Development and Change, Belfius

I arranged for Max to come and run a training day for the L&D teams within the Safran UK group.

Everyone was very excited to attend and Max did not disappoint.

This highly interactive session really tackled the question that was posed and the feedback has been very positive.

I particularly liked how everyone got involved in the discussions, as this is not always the case, and everyone was thoroughly engaged, the day seemed to fly past.

Hugely successful and we will definitely run again.

Anya

Safran University Coordinator, Safran UK

I had the opportunity to attend the TeamPitfalls® workshop during a Meetup. This unique and great workshop highlights the typical dysfunctions of a project that tend to emerge in the team’s behavior.

The environment set up by the facilitator is safe and enable retrospective discussions.

Such a great workshop is a must to any Agile team!

Christophe

Agile Coach, Trainer & Facilitator, EVS